The present invention relates to license management, and more particularly, this invention relates to license management for software license attribution.
Software is generally protected by copyright law, and any use of software whose copyright is not the property of the user is dependent on a license from the copyright owner. Such licenses generally impose restrictions on the way in which the software may be used, in particular some items that may be restricted may include the number of concurrent users that may use the software on a given system at one time, the number of machines on which the software may be installed, etc.
Of course, payment is generally required for a license, and in some cases ongoing payments may be required depending on the extent and nature of the use of the software, particularly in how it relates to the restrictions. Still further, it may be possible to obtain alternative license terms in a case where use evolves over tune so that a particular license no longer satisfactorily covers the current or expanded use of the software. In enterprise environments with large numbers of users and machines on one hand, and a variety of different payment or royalty mechanisms on the other hand, the association of a particular license with a particular use may become increasingly complex. In such situations it is customary to provide license management software configured to monitor software usage.
Recent descriptions of license management software apply a number of different methods to associate software installation or use with the most appropriate of several valid licenses for the software in question. The objective of these methods is to optimise the use of licenses in order to remain compliant with the terms and conditions without having to over-procure and pay more for the use of the licenses than is necessary.
WIPO Publication No. WO0805280A1 discloses a method and a corresponding apparatus for controlling and metering usage of software products on a computer. When several licenses are available for the same product a method for determining the best license is proposed in order to maximize the exploitation of the licenses. Such a determination is based on a predetermined set of parameters which influence the selection of the best available license. The licenses are stored on a catalogue with an associated list of parameters indicative of usage constraints of the product. The licenses are ordered according to predetermined parameters optimization criteria, so that when a request is received, the license manager may easily find the best license, e.g., that license, suitable for the requested use, having the highest usage constraint. An additional feature is that the licenses are ordered according to one or more hierarchies, each hierarchy being ordered with respect to the other hierarchies according to predetermined priority rules.
This method, such as when two licenses have similar characteristics, applies a simple approach, trying to evenly distribute usage sessions between the licenses.
The disadvantage of all of these methods is that the choice is based on fixed rules, driven by an attempt to make the best choice. In real-world scenarios, the use of software may be very different from the logic assumed in the rules, and the method may make choices that lead to out-of-compliance or a non-optimized license use.